


Move Me

by plushbun



Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: First Fanfiction, M/M, and the monster in my mind, be kind, crow is the cure, depressed dimitri, my weird humor, the light in the shadows, whimsical id say maybe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:08:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25145200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plushbun/pseuds/plushbun
Summary: A solemn Dimitri struggles with life after getting out of prison, seeking what he calls "natural joy". While on a quest to find this so called "natural joy", he stumbles upon a boy that not only makes him feel joy, but every other emotion he's been missing over the years.
Relationships: Dimitri Allen/Crow (Professor Layton)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 9





	Move Me

**Author's Note:**

> CW/Content Warnings:
> 
> violence mention  
> smoking mention  
> drug use and abuse mention  
> childhood homelessness mention  
> depression and mental health mention, therapy setting used.
> 
> \---
> 
> Hello!  
> This is my first ever fanfiction I've posted online and wow is it intimidating. I'm hoping to write much more as time goes on and share the fun little crackships I've had in my head over the years with everyone. I've recently gotten into the Professor Layton series and it's been super fun so far. I finished Unwound Future the other night for the first time and felt compelled to write this since I'm starting Last Specter soon (and dear god I love Crow with all my heart.) I always have a habit of shipping my faves together no matter how nonsensical the paring is, so I hope you find the fun I found in these two as well. Enjoy!

Dimitri was shuffling papers on his desk, eyeing endless numbers he had printed earlier from one of his complex machines that calculated an infinite amount of numbers at once. While he had given up entirely on the concept of time travel, he was still enamored by science, going as far as dabbling a bit into physiology and histology to fill the void that his abandoned studies in polydimensional physics had left. His eyes shuffled from paper to paper, calculating in his mind if the numbers he had generated for the equations he inputted were of use to him. Each day he sat at his desk and did something like this, bending his mind to the limit with a new topic of study or research he found interesting. For instance, last week he had started upon nuclear medicine, something that had caught his interest for a while due to his newfound fascination for the human body. 

Although this was a new fascination of his, another thing held his mind other than the uninterrupted numbers swirling and churning inside his head. 

About a year ago, he had taken a young boy into his care. He would have never thought about adopting beforehand, even more so having his own child. But something had clicked inside his head that had taken years to develop once he was out of prison…

...

...Free from prison, and out early due to good behavior, Dmitri was lost upon leaving prison for the first time, being let loose into a world that has changed entirely since the last time he had seen it. For months, he was stuck on what to do with his life, spiraling into a bleak depression and ultimately lost concerning what his purpose was. His field of work wasn’t enjoyable to him anymore, and all the time he had spent on it to earn a degree and become a scientist had suddenly gone to waste. Any knowledge he retained wasn’t something he could easily transfer to another field either, and coupled with the fact that anything that had to do with physics now drove him mad to see caused him difficulty unlike anything else. 

\---  
Physics. Time travel. Claire. The time machine. Bill Hawks. Bill fucking Hawks. He couldn’t just wait, could he? He couldn’t.

Can’t forget Clive using me as a tool. Can’t forget how gullible I was. Can’t forget how easily he roped me into his own madness, pulling me into a place I’ve yet to come out of, as it’s a hole inside my mind I cannot crawl out no matter how hard I try.  
\---

These memories lingered and poisoned his mind with time. His head hurt any time something came up relating to it all, causing any other thought he could have been having at the moment to be drained out by high pitched screams and lightning flashes. Paralyzed, the man only saw in his head claws coming out of the shadows to tear apart his brain matter. The taste of the wine he drank at Thames Arms suddenly touched his tongue even though he had lifted nothing to his mouth to drink. The smell of the disguise he wore to become Future Layton, the old fabric smelling dusty and occasionally of warm cigarettes The Family had smoked around him. The cold hands of Claire he felt for the first time when he realized a part of her had actually made it to the future. The sight of seeing Layton and having him ask what color pen was in his pocket, when no such pen existed at all. The sounds of the scientists he had kidnapped working around him endlessly, with one such scientist remarking on how he missed his family and couldn’t wait to get back to the present. 

These claws teared deeper and deeper the more the man let it ravage his brain, keeping him still as it ate away at anything he could have had left. Every morsel of his sanity was slowly being eaten away by this monster called memories.

Realizing how powerful his mind was and how he had gradually lost control over it over the years, the man sought therapy to help with these dangerous thoughts before they caused him to do something he’d regret once more. 

While he did receive the help he needed in therapy to be able to handle his mind better, he still had one thing that caused him unrest under his now calm surface; how could he find happiness again? Although now freed from his violent mind and equipped with the skills to manage it in the case memories pop up again that traumatize him, he still didn’t feel as if it was enough to end his troubles. 

He still had the problem of finding joy all over again. What was joy? A tune? A concept? A theme? Does it require an equation? Can I buy it? Yes? No..? 

...

“Please tell me how I can find Joy again, and tell them that I’d like them back in my life. They’ve been missing for far too long and I’m worried I’ll never see them again. Everyone else sees Joy everyday. Why are they gone when it comes to me specifically? Are they hiding? Do they not like me? Have I done something to them and it has caused us to drift apart? If I did, I wish they’d tell me. Have you seen Joy? Can you talk to them for me? Do you think it would be okay if I sent a message to them through you? Would that be rude? Would Joy think less of me if I did that?”

“... Dimitri, who is Joy..?”

“Joy… the emotion. Happiness. Pleasure. A smile. I see it everyday when I walk in here and meet you every week, you specifically say you’re “happy to see me.”

“I see.”

…

For a long time, Dimitri lacked one emotion. It bugged him on and off, as some moments he swore he felt this elusive emotion only for it to go away the same moment it had manifested. Frustrated, he wondered why he couldn’t keep this emotion inside him for long, for it appeared as fast as it disappeared, fleeing and never letting him bask in tranquility. He tried his hardest to grab it and hold onto it, from excessively drinking wine to a point of drunkenness to smoking and abusing any kind of illegal substance he could find and or grow himself. While he grew addicted to the temporary “joy” he liked to call these highs, eventually he realized he had been tricking himself all along into getting this emotion, fabricating this feeling instead of having it come naturally from himself. Soon after he realized this joy he was experiencing was fake in his eyes, he set off on a journey to find something that would spark “natural joy”, as he liked to call it.  
If substances existed to cause fake joy to come out, then something had to have existed that caused natural joy to come out. 

Dimitri then went off on his own adventure to find something that gave him this “natural joy”, from trying out new hobbies to taking better care of himself as a whole, as he often neglected to do so during his depressive episodes. While he did find new hobbies that brought about this joy, such as coloring and getting into a different field of study that he discovered interested him, he wasn’t satisfied with the amount he was getting, craving more as he searched longer for something that caused him to have an emotional high like no other. 

In the past, he had tried abusing substances to get this joy he craved so badly, and had ruled that in order to replicate this joy without the use of substances, he’d have to find something equally as daring as the substances themselves, equating certain big events in life to ways he could achieve these same highs. 

He had a piece of paper he had scrawled on during an entire night. On it was a list of things he could try doing to get this joy he sought… 

\- Buy a house.  
\- Get a pet.  
\- Buy stocks.  
\- Get married.  
\- Have a kid.  
\- Get rich.  
\- Go skydiving.  
\- Write a book.  
\- Get famous.  
\- Eat a candy bar. (A specific brand name is noted.)  
\- Call (unintelligible) every night at 5pm.  
\- Kiss someone for a long time.  
\- Focus your life on religion.  
\- Buy a fancy car.  
\- Travel to a different country.  
\- Own a restaurant.  
\- Buy plush toys. All of them. (???)  
\- Own every single record in existence.  
\- Become a sex worker.  
\- Become a famous artist.  
\- Become a dog. (How? I guess I’ll research this when it comes to this point…)

…The list was scattered to say the least. Throughout the night, he called many of his friends and colleagues, asking what they thought to be big events or actions in life that could spark joy for a long time. Many of them were reflective of what they thought to be big decisions in life, and it showed as he looked over the list. Even so, he didn’t mind trying any or all of them to get this happiness he desired so eagerly. He was that desperate.

Seeing the list as his guide, he slowly went through his options, choosing to go with what he could do at the time along with multitasking with trying other options at the same time if possible. In the end, he was sure one of these was bound to work. If multiple did, even better. He’d take anything he could get, even if that meant doing something he didn’t entirely want.

...

Months passed by as he went through this list, eventually getting to one he knew he’d regret as soon as he did it. However, he told himself he didn’t know any better. What if this was the ticket to joy after all? I wouldn’t be able to know until I’ve tried it. 

It was on a fateful day Dimitri arrived in Misthallery, hoping to find joy in a town that housed so many different walks of life. While the journey there was far and costly, he had grown past feeling bad over any loss that occurred to him as a result of trying something on his list, suffering each consequence as it happened in hopes that anything would spark this cell named joy inside him to mutate and fill his body with something else other than a blank slate.

It was there he met a boy named Crow, destined to change his life forever as this boy was the key to making this cell grow inside him to the point where he would finally meet joy...

...and other emotions Dimitri never knew existed to begin with, as his obsession with joy led him astray from the other dangerous, compelling, emotions that existed inside of him.


End file.
